debbie harry
The 100 Greatest Rock Stars Since That Was A Thing
Three of the 100 are in this picture! The Rolling Stones, in 1964, from left to right: Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The problem with lists like this is they are invariably bullshit. So our prime objective was to make sure we didn’t do a bullshit list. I’m not saying we did a scientific one either. Because that isn’t possible — actually, it is, if you wanted some compilation of who sold the most records/concert tickets/has the most fans/got the most death threats, etc., and someone could come up with a bunch of very empirical metrics and create a “heat index” or something, and could deliver an actual scientific ranking! But we, um, didn’t do that. In fact we didn’t even, technically, do the “we...
Dreaming of Debbie
Debbie Harry, quite possibly the most iconic woman in music, doesn’t know she’s an icon. It must have been twenty-five years ago when I spotted Debbie Harry floating down an Alphabet City street in Manhattan, clutching not a purse but a small dog, her signature blonde lob glowing like a crown of light. Years later I saw her in the 2000 Axis Theatre production of Sarah Kane’s play Crave, a brilliant beacon in an ensemble cast. That was definitely after she starred with one of my exes in an indie short film, and also after, I think, I was lunching with an acquaintance who casually mentioned that Debbie was in the audience of her friend’s Lower East Side play, and brought her dog along to that, too. When you live in New York, star sightings are somewhat rote, and amidst the churning hus...
